June 22, 2016

"... and I don’t blame black folks who vote for her or support her. I get it. But I just don’t know. When I see her husband defending her use of the 'superpredator,' come on. Talking about how the crime bill actually cut crime, come on. Stand back. Defending welfare reform at this hour? Here’s the thing that’s most damning for me: How do you take $600,000 from Goldman Sachs for speeches, knowing you’re going to run for president? Somebody says, 'What were you doing?' and you say, 'Well, that’s what they offered.' It’s a disturbing lack of personal judgment. So it scares me.

-- Not a Clinton supporter, but the main argument is that, if you are left/left-leaning, she's more likely to appoint Supreme Court justices and use the federal government in ways that support your preferred outcomes. In addition, she is more likely to not hobble the Affordable Care Act.

Why? How have the topics Coates cares about most improved during her time in the Senate, her executiveship at State? Her time in the WH alongside Bill?

This is an example of the biggest problem in these debates: ACTUAL actions and results under Clintons have been terrible on those fronts. But they say the right things. Trump says the wrong things, and has no public record. Why on earth would you say "Obivously Clinton is preferable to Trump."

MadisonMan said...I have gay family members. How can I vote for someone who actively courts donations from countries/regimes that kill gays?

They're probably the same countries - plus more - which kill people for not being/remaining muslims:

"This report surveys the apostasy laws of twenty-three countries in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia and primarily focuses on jurisdictions that make apostasy, or renouncing one’s religion, a capital offense."

How can anyone vote for someone who actively courts donations from countries/regimes that are barbaric shit holes?

Obama who had no public record worth speaking of ran against the public record of the perceived record of the third term of the George W Bush Administration and that was good enough yet as far as Coates is concerned the bad public record of Hillary Clinton is still better than the no public record of Trump. The two neurons in his brain are trying to connect but just can't close the deal. I can understand the racial motive for voting for Obama twice on Coates part. But this year its Hillary who is running and all she is offering is more of the same horrible economy of who blacks get the worst of.

This is already shaping up to a very ugly election. "This person is awful and has no business running for president, but hey, at least s/he isn't a criminal/fascist like him/her, yuck."

BTW I couldn't believe how much money Bill Clinton made as "honorary chancellor" of a for-profit university system. If Trump is correct that the for-profit university's owner received millions in grants from the State Department during Hillary's tenure, then all I have to say is wow. Even if there was no bias or favoritism or quid pro quo, it just looks terrible. People in public life used to care about how things appeared, but I guess the Clintons have gradually changed the game since 1992.

Welfare reform is the most obviously successful domestic policy initiative since the Civil Rights Acts. Yet Coates is so in the tank for "everything is racist" he's citing it as a reason to be against Clinton. Coates unintentionally reveals quite a bit about the left.

Coates is the most over praised by the left (Praise / Excellence) writer in America. In part this is to foster their effort to portray criticism from the right as racist. But it's also their no enemies to the left policy , and support for those willing to stand outside the mainstream in the belief they pull the Overton window appropriately.

It's not just that he's often wrong, it's that he's both so obviously wrong and so certain at the same time. I remember him writing Zimmerman was obviously lying because some grainy CCTV footage didn't show blood from 40 feet away. Blood would have to be spurting away from his head to be visible. Later the photos were released showing quite a bit of blood but of course no retraction. He's not interested in facts or reality, just in how he can claim racism.

It is not a lack of personal judgemrnt; that is her personal judgment.

This is it, isn't it. Hillary is indeed the vastly more experienced candidate, experienced enough to calculate in advance and set up her own private email server and network as well as her own personalized State Department without an Inspector General, and so forth. The problem is the congenital behavior she happens to be vastly more experienced in.

The argument is that any voter with a shred of intelligence would obviously prefer an urbane, experienced Vladimir Putin over an unsavory loose cannon like Quasimodo or King Kong.

Coates is a Black nationalist. Race is the center of his world. He does not believe in democracy, he does not believe in progress. He believes that history is best explained as an eternal conflict between races. There can never be peace, only struggle, and only one winner.

Not only is Hillary NOT "obviously preferable to Trump," I think many who excoriate Trump are missing what IS obvious: Hillary will be worse than Trump. She is a Washington insider, with all the connections--financial and otherwise--without which the most well-meaning politician will be stymied in his or her efforts to accomplish anything. She's also philosophically aligned with the powers that be--the oligarchy for whom "our" representatives actually work. She's an avid war hawk, with no compunction at inflicting violence, death, and misery on untold numbers of innocents in pursuit of the American empire's agenda. Trump, by comparison, is a blowhard with no real convictions, and who doesn't seem too interested in continuing our war machine. (In his lack of that killer instinct, Trump is certainly preferable to Hillary, and to Obama, and to most of the Washington political class.)

Those who take Trump's campaign rhetoric seriously might be easily fooled into believing that professional wrestling is populated by superhumans who can take bone-breaking, concussion-making punishment on a daily basis and never need to be ambulanced to the hospital. In short, Trump is playing a "heel," and he obviously would never attempt half of what he promises. Even if Trump did sincerely mean everything he says and really tried to accomplish everything he promises, Congress would stop him dead in his tracks. No president can be worse than Congress allows.

So, is Playboy better or worse than when it appeared as part of the normal accoutrements of the Althouse parental coffee table? Was Alex Haley a better interviewer than Bomani Jones? Is Ta-Nehisi Coates smarter than he was when he was a lousy student and he lost all those jobs?

The man and the moment have come together. Incoherence and rage have become all the rage. It has paid off pretty well for T-NC.

It's funny--while I have my own issues with Clinton, TNC's specific complaints all land with a thud for me.

1) Superpredators--actually such things exist. They plague poor and often black communities. Clinton was right to demonize such demons, and TNC is being obtuse acting as though this is somehow offensive.

2) Welfare Reform--maybe some elements of it should be adjusted, but hell--anyone who thinks welfare was this great system before Clinton came along is crazy.

3) Goldman Sachs speeches--I don't like that Clinton is dishonest about it, but it's better to have someone who understands the financial industry if they're going to be regulating it. Someone who simplistically says "break up the banks!" just seems unserious.

If TNC wanted to mention her dishonesty, her poor foreign policy judgment, her lawlessness--then right on. But here he's got weak cards.

Coates is a Black nationalist. Race is the center of his world. He does not believe in democracy, he does not believe in progress. He believes that history is best explained as an eternal conflict between races. There can never be peace, only struggle, and only one winner.

Hyperbole? Not really. There is a point where writers/academics/bloviators like Coates slide into black nationalism.

Fun Fact: According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were 190 KKK chapters in 2015. Number of black nationalist groups: 180. Giving the Klan a run for its money. SPLC attributes the rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.

The term "superpredator" implies that it's only a relatively small number of blacks committing the most, and most serious, crimes. I guess Ta-Click-Click wants us to believe that most or all of them are criminals.

This is not a normal election. We actually gave a chance (probably our last chance ) of breaking the elite power brokers hold over this country's economy.

In my life I remember small towns had small factories employing people. States had their own banks and the banks we aligned with the local people. Farms were owned by multi-generation families.

Now everything is done for the economic elites. Free trade with 3rd world countries is exporting jobs, pollution and worker rights and importing poverty. Wall Street makes billions but millions of poor and middle class are destroyed.

Open borders is just importing more poverty and disease. It benefits no Americans except Wall Street and Democratic pRty.

"Fun Fact: According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were 190 KKK chapters in 2015. Number of black nationalist groups: 180. Giving the Klan a run for its money. SPLC attributes the rise to the Black Lives Matter movement."

That figure from the SPLC, a left-wing organization, probably understates the number of racist black nationalist groups around the country.

She's an avid war hawk, with no compunction at inflicting violence, death, and misery on untold numbers of innocents in pursuit of the American empire's agenda.

6/22/16, 10:17 AM

You are close.

She's an avid war hawk, with no compunction at inflicting violence, death, and misery on untold numbers of innocents in pursuit of her agenda. Those so affected may or may not be Americans. She just does not care for anyone or anything but Hillary!

what's Coates's problem with welfare reform? Too many black people get off the dole and go to work? he must be under the impression that blacks should forever be stuck on government assistance. What a low opinion of blacks he must have!

Oh, the non-college educated "most brilliant man alive". Really makes college seem worthwhile when this hack is so damned brilliant without it.

1) Superpredators--actually such things exist. They plague poor and often black communities. Clinton was right to demonize such demons, and TNC is being obtuse acting as though this is somehow offensive.

Thing is --- and this is the case with most Progressive causes and laws --- he does not have to live with the consequences of letting them out of prison. They won't be attacking him and his family. Sure, they'll kill some random black kid and family elsewhere, but that is just "gun culture" then. People who do not have to live with the outcomes of their goals (i.e, Progressives praising how great public schools are when their kids sure as hell don't attend, or how great illegal immigration is when it's not their jobs being taken or wages dropping so low as to make it impossible to support yourself) are the worst. A stain on the planet.

2) Welfare Reform--maybe some elements of it should be adjusted, but hell--anyone who thinks welfare was this great system before Clinton came along is crazy.

It gave the "government of the enlightened" more power. That's the good the old system did. Sure, it ruined everything else --- but the government trolls did well.

3) Goldman Sachs speeches--I don't like that Clinton is dishonest about it, but it's better to have someone who understands the financial industry if they're going to be regulating it. Someone who simplistically says "break up the banks!" just seems unserious.

There's zero evidence she understands a damned thing about the industry. She's just on the take.

Fun Fact: According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there were 190 KKK chapters in 2015. Number of black nationalist groups: 180. Giving the Klan a run for its money. SPLC attributes the rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Given that A LOT of colleges alone have these groups on campus, their number is utter BS.

The female chauvinists were outraged that a man would have the audacity to lead the exploitation of women.

As for Trump, he is human, like us. However, there is a dearth of evidence to believe the catastrophic climate argued by his competitors. He seems to recognize both moral imperatives: individual dignity and intrinsic value, the ubiquity of natural imperatives, and the need to reconcile each in a civilized society.

Basically it's sad. His preconceived notions are so complete that it's like he lives in a different world. Everything is about racism, and he cannot and will not believe that for almost all Americans it's a total non-issue.I remember Dennis Prager saying that he knew a bald man who told him, "When I walk into a room full of people, all I can see is hair."

"There's zero evidence she understands a damned thing about the industry. She's just on the take."

That's another matter, but simply being close or friendly to the finance industry in itself isn't a problem for me. I'd rather a president have that expertise or access to people with that expertise. (Hillary, more likely, is just willing to go along with whatever the industry wants, up until it is not in her political interest to do so--her unreliability is the real problem)

A disturbing lack of personal judgment? Probably not. The person with a disturbing lack of judgment is Coates. The Clintons have been thoroughly corrupt since long before they made the national scene. In all that time the Democrats as a party have proven themselves perfectly willing to accept and defend whatever outrage the unprincipled Hillary or her venial husband choose to commit. For Hillary taking those fig leaf covered bribes from Wall Street was a foregone conclusion. Experientia docet.

Nationalists have a few things in common. They believe that your primary identity is your nationality. It dwarfs whatever other identities you have. You aren't a "mother" or "father" or "worker" who is also, say, a Canadian, you are a Canadian mother, or father, or worker. You are fundamentally different from a Mexican mother, or father, or worker. You can't relate to a Mexican based on some common experience because your experience as a Canadian shapes everything else. You are a Canadian, mother or father or worker is a role you play. Coates is a Black nationalist. He believes that it is impossible for him to see the world as simply a human being. Coates writes for the Atlantic, and his Black nationalist themed Between the World and Me has won a National Book Award.White nationalists (like David Duke) are reviled by sensible people. Coates should be reviled as well.

Every time I hear the name Ta Nahesi Coates I always think of the movie Street Kings with Keanu Reaves, where one of the bad guys name was "Coates" and they always referred to them by their last names only. Freemont and Coates.

"Obviously" Ta Nehisi Coates is a flipping idiot. That's the only conclusion I can reach. Neither one of these two weasels running in November are a walk in the park---but it's hard to figure out that one of them is "obviously" preferable to the other.

Trump is an egotistical blowhard. Hillary is also an egotistical blowhard with a record of grifting, facilitating death and destruction in the Middle East, enabling a sexually aggressive, perjurious husband's excesses, pathogical lying and covering up and endangering national security to avoid disclosure laws, among other things. And, for a race huckster like Coates, she also supported an administration that has promoted record unemployment in the black community and unprecedented racial division in the US.

How is she "obviously" a better choice. Coates is an unthinking pimp for the Democrats.

Sorry for the double posting of this. The software made my first attempt to post look like it had disappeared. Not sure why. I deleted the earlier one and here are the accumulated comments from there:

Hagar said...

It is not a lack of personal judgment; that is her personal judgment. 6/22/16, 9:36 AM Clayton Hennesey said...

It is not a lack of personal judgment; that is her personal judgment.

This is it, isn't it. Hillary is indeed the vastly more experienced candidate, experienced enough to calculate in advance and set up her own private email server and network as well as her own personalized State Department without an Inspector General, and so forth. The problem is the congenital behavior she happens to be vastly more experienced in.

The argument is that any voter with a shred of intelligence would obviously prefer an urbane, experienced Vladimir Putin over an unsavory loose cannon like Quasimodo or King Kong. 6/22/16, 10:03 AM Bill, Republic of Texas said...

I do know what's going to happen under Hillary Clinton. Imagine the foreign policy successes of JFK & Jimmy Carter, the political honesty of LBJ & Obama, the dignity of office of a drunk Nixon or Slick Willie in the female intern's locker room.

Hillary Clinton's first term will judged by any thoughtful person to be a huge success if and only if there are no nuclear detonations in American cities. And nobody thoughtful is expecting her first term to be a success.

Don't forget how Hillary broke a traffic law in 1978 when crossing the street in a manner that went against what the posted sign allowed!

Here's the thing. People are less interested in supposed cub scout rule-following in a republic as corrupt as America. Convince them that the laws are just and the politics are fair, and they will go along with your, "Hillary is the corruptiest!" rant.

But no one's convinced that she's more corrupt or crooked than the system itself. And hence, your cries will continue to fall on largely deaf ears.

Not least because it was your party that has done more than any other to get the country this way.

"Not least because it was your party that has done more than any other to get the country this way."The party of slavery? Of Jim Crow? Of abandoning allies? Of admiring communism? Of interning ethnic Japanese? Of crony capitalism? of contempt for the working class?That would be the Democrats.

People are voting in 2016. Slavery, Jim Crow, Japanese internment and communism are not issues.

Crony capitalism and contempt for the working class are issues however, and that's because Republicans pushed strongest for a system with unlimited money/graft/favoritism/lobbying donations in politics and they did it for the benefit of 1% at the expense of a system that had anything left to do for the working class.

To be as recklessly stupid as you are seems to require a special kind of effort.

"Crony capitalism and contempt for the working class are issues however, and that's because Republicans pushed strongest for a system with unlimited money/graft/favoritism/lobbying donations in politics and they did it for the benefit of 1% at the expense of a system that had anything left to do for the working class. "

You don't need explicit political payments to have crony capitalism. Plenty of countries do very well with this (being intensely crony-ish) in spite of mostly "public" funding of politics. Check out South Korea for one. A very great deal of influence in either direction is expressed under the table. Most of the problems in the US aren't really related to explicit or sidelined campaign contributions. Much of the business of political influence comes from revolving-door employment, public-private contracting, subsidies, "consulting", especially concerning regulatory compliance, legal specialization, regulatory decisions, etc. ad infinitum. Prosecuting this incredible mess amounts to either pushing the Sisyphean rock or untangling the Gordian knot.

"To be as recklessly stupid as you are seems to require a special kind of effort."The idea that one political party is "good" is and the other political party is "evil" is stupid. You can't check boxes, like on an internet personality test, and add up the score and find out if you are right or wrong. It ain't that easy, bro. Politics is the point of the spear. Politics divides people, because it has to. There is no right or wrong politics any more than there is a right or wrong color to paint a house. It's all contingency, compromise, and consensus. Read your damn Oakshott.